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This matter need not be elaborated at present: it suffices to
say that if the created were all, these ultimates [the higher]
need not exist: but the Supreme does include primals, the primals
because the producers. In other words, there must be, with the
made, the making source; and, unless these are to be identical,
there will be need of some link between them. Similarly, this
link which is the Intellectual-Principle demands yet a
Transcendent. If we are asked why this Transcendent also should
not have self-vision, our answer is that it has no need of
vision; but this we will discuss later: for the moment we go
back, since the question at issue is gravely important.
We repeat that the Intellectual-Principle must have, actually
has, self-vision, firstly because it has multiplicity, next
because it exists for the external and therefore must be a seeing
power, one seeing that external; in fact its very essence is
vision. Given some external, there must be vision; and if there
be nothing external the Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind]
exists in vain. Unless there is something beyond bare unity,
there can be no vision: vision must converge with a visible
object. And this which the seer is to see can be only a multiple,
no undistinguishable unity; nor could a universal unity find
anything upon which to exercise any act; all, one and desolate,
would be utter stagnation; in so far as there is action, there is
diversity. If there be no distinctions, what is there to do, what
direction in which to move? An agent must either act upon the
extern or be a multiple and so able to act upon itself: making no
advance towards anything other than itself, it is motionless and
where it could know only blank fixity it can know nothing.
The intellective power, therefore, when occupied with the
intellectual act, must be in a state of duality, whether one of
the two elements stand actually outside or both lie within: the
intellectual act will always comport diversity as well as the
necessary identity, and in the same way its characteristic
objects [the Ideas] must stand to the Intellectual-Principle as
at once distinct and identical. This applies equally to the
single object; there can be no intellection except of something
containing separable detail and, since the object is a
Reason-principle [a discriminated Idea] it has the necessary
element of multiplicity. The Intellectual-Principle, thus, is
informed of itself by the fact of being a multiple organ of
vision, an eye receptive of many illuminated objects. If it had
to direct itself to a memberless unity, it would be dereasoned:
what could it say or know of such an object? The self-affirmation
of [even] a memberless unity implies the repudiation of all that
does not enter into the character: in other words, it must be
multiple as a preliminary to being itself.
Then, again, in the assertion "I am this particular thing,"
either the "particular thing" is distinct from the assertor- and
there is a false statement- or it is included within it, and, at
once, multiplicity is asserted: otherwise the assertion is "I am
what I am," or "I am I."
If it be no more than a simple duality able to say "I and that
other phase," there is already multiplicity, for there is
distinction and ground of distinction, there is number with all
its train of separate things.
In sum, then, a knowing principle must handle distinct items: its
object must, at the moment of cognition, contain diversity;
otherwise the thing remains unknown; there is mere conjunction,
such a contact, without affirmation or comprehension, as would
precede knowledge, the intellect not yet in being, the impinging
agent not percipient.
Similarly the knowing principle itself cannot remain simplex,
especially in the act of self-knowing: all silent though its
self-perception be, it is dual to itself. Of course it has no
need of minute self-handling since it has nothing to learn by its
intellective act; before it is [effectively] Intellect, it holds
knowledge of its own content. Knowledge implies desire, for it
is, so to speak, discovery crowning a search; the utterly
undifferentiated remains self-centred and makes no enquiry about
that self: anything capable of analysing its content, must be a
manifold.
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